Fast fact: Irwin has seen big changes at Adobe in a career with the company that has spanned more than a decade. While Adobe continues to boast a channel of major software partners like Data#3, Dimension Data and Insight, the trend over recent years has been the growth of its digital platforms targeting the marketing sector. 

Australian distributor: Ingram Micro

Past employer: Express Data

Fast fact: ALE has reshaped its partner engagement across the world to focus on five key verticals: government, healthcare, education, hospitality and transportation.

They said: "We are focusing on partners who can specialise with us along these key industries. We are also expanding our local partners to service the requirements of small and medium businesses across Australia."

What's new? "Over the last 18 months we have significantly increased our channel coverage through the appointment of three new distributors to address our growth markets."

Australian distributors: VExpress, Integrated Products, Bluechip Infotech, ACA Pacific

Past employers: Verizon, MCI, DeTeWe Shipton

Fast fact: Green joined Alibaba from his previous employer, VMware, in October 2016, coinciding with an announcement that the cloud computing division of the Chinese e-commerce giant was building a data center facility in Sydney.

Past employers: VMware, Symantec

He said: "We are looking at wider and deeper partners in the Industrial market, such as oil and gas, and mining, minerals and metals. Also partners with deep technical expertise, in particular cooling. From a geography stand point, the Victorian market is a key focus area for us and one we will be looking to grow."

What's new? "Our partner program has a very strong membership and this year, we reviewed our New Zealand distribution landscape and after an extensive process, appointed Dicker Data NZ who now joins Westcon as our two distribution partners."

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Dicker Data, Pacific Datacom

Past employers: Adobe, Express Data, Synnex, Compaq

Fast fact: Cisco in May completed its acquisition of cloud application and business monitoring provider AppDynamics for US$3.7 billion.

They said: "We view partners as allies in our mission to empower customers to achieve excellence in application and business performance. This mission has become even more critical and challenging as applications become more central to business success while consumer expectations around app performance skyrockets. We partner with technology leaders that share our vision of helping enterprises navigate the chaos of their digital transformations."

What's new? "It’s been a year since I joined AppDynamics as its first head of alliances and channel for businesses across Australia and APJ. Heading into this role, I had one main priority: strengthen partner alignment. We achieved this goal through focused investments in building our channel team and business in this region and putting in place programs for partner training and support."

Past employers: NetSuite, Juniper Networks, McAfee

Fast fact: Wylie has spent nearly 20 years with Apple and more than five years leading its Australian channel, which is distinct from the telco channel that drives the lion's share of its revenue through iPhone sales.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Synnex

Fast fact: The recently opened Aruba Customer Experience Centre provides various experience zones, including a mock hospital, retail store, classroom and hotel lobby so partners can better demonstrate the Aruba solution to customers.

They said: "As a global channel-first organisation, our partners and resellers are the backbone of our business and we are focused on looking for partners that have established customer bases as well as a proven ability to sell, implement and support various market segments. Currently our channel focus in Australia is on the healthcare, hospitality, retail and outdoor venue verticals, so we are keen to build our network of partners in those specific industries across the country."

What's new? "A noteworthy partner achievement this year was the announcement that our key partner, Accucom, was a finalist in the 2017 CRN Impact Awards for the HPE/Aruba project at Barker College in Sydney. Accucom is one of our many trusted partners at Aruba and it was a rewarding to be involved in a project that had such tangible benefits for the school. The Barker College project really exemplified the importance of a seamless, channel collaboration."

Australian distributors: Arrow ECS, Dicker Data, Lynx Technologies, Ingram Micro

Past employers: Avaya, McAfee, EMC

Fast fact: Wharrier has spent more than a decade with the vendor behind AutoCAD, rising through the ranks from software compliance manager to take the top partner role in February 2015.

They said: "With vendor like Autodesk we have very focused solutions. We are always interested to talk to partners who are specialised in manufacturing, architecture, engineering and construction or media and entertainment."

What's new? "Autodesk is now in a full subscription world. We have made complete shift to recurring revenue amid no longer offering perpetual licences as part of our ongoing business model transformation. It is really full steam ahead in that annual recurring revenue dynamic."

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro

Past employers: CSC, Software Spectrum, Computacentre

Fast fact: It's been a tumultous year for unified communcations vendor, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US in January 2017. More recently, Avaya has revealed its steps toward exiting Chapter 11, including the appointment of a new chief executive, agreements with priority creditors and a debt reduction of more than US$3 billion.

They said: Williams joined Avaya in 2014 and was appointed as regional channel leader in March 2017 with a remit to work with the vendor's partners to deliver customisable solutions to joint clients. At the time, managing director Peter Chidiac said: "Avaya A/NZ has undergone a significant transition over the last 18 to 24 months to ensure we’re more closely aligned with the needs of customers in today’s digital context."

What's new? "We are launching a new partner-hosted licensing subscription model, called 'Powered by IP Office'. We have launched this in 23 other countries and are launching it in Australia. We have just signed our first customer. This is a partner-hosted platform - we give the partner a copy of our software for free and they pay as they bring customers on. It is a risk-averse model, you don't have to invest heavily in infrastructure upfront unlike other platforms. It is a pay-as-you-go scenario for the partner."

Australian distributors: Westcon-Comstor, Arrow ECS, VExpress

Past employers: Commander, IPL Distribution, Redmedia

Fast fact: AWS has introduced or updated a number of initiatives to assist partners to become strategic advisers to customers, and maximise the benefits of all AWS services, such as its AWS Managed Service Partner Program and the Competency Program, which enable partners to grow by driving deeper skills specialisation. Over 10,000 partners joined the AWS Partner Network in the past year.

They said: "AWS looks for competency partners who are highly focused on creating value for their customers and who have developed specialisation in a key domain, like storage, SAP on AWS, migration services, financial services and public sector."

What's new? "In the mining and resources industry, for example, leading players like Origin Energy and OzMinerals use AWS services like big data analytics, IoT, AI and machine learning to negotiate the mining business cycle. This proves a critical inflection point for the industry as it enables more operative use of capital and labour."

Past employers: Microsoft, EDS, Unisys

Fast fact: Ogden was appointed as Australian managing director of the consumer electronics vendor in May 2014. She was previously NZ managing director from 2001 to 2008.

They said: She set up the New Zealand operation in 2001 and over a period of eight years increasing annual revenue from NZ$150,000 to more than NZ$11 million. "Because I started that business, I feel extreme personal investment. It remains among my proudest achievements, an endeavour that began with me sitting on the floor building my own catalogues, to training and building a team that is still thriving today."

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Dicker Data, Cellnet, Aeon, Brightstar

Past employers: Kobo, Sega Ozisoft

Fast fact: Locally, BlueJeans has moved from a dual channel and direct model to now seeing 95 percent of new business being done via the channel in the fourth quarter. BlueJeans has appointed an additional channel manager taking the channel team to a total of three.

They said: "The demand for video conferencing and collaboration is increasing as businesses see the value in this technology through an engaged and mobile workforce. This presents BlueJeans and our resellers with more opportunities to assist customers in achieving their business goals. BlueJeans is seeing a considerable interest from the professional services sector, as well as government and healthcare verticals."

What's new? "2017 has already been an exciting year for BlueJeans, with strategic milestone partnerships with Ingram Micro, Asia Pacific’s largest wholesale technology distributor, and the appointment of our first Australian distribution deal to VExpress."

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, VExpress

Past employers: ShoreTel, Tyro Payment

Fast fact: It has been more than two years since Woodward took the B2B channel role at Brother, tasked with growing its footprint in the business segment.

They said: Brother launched a new program to support this B2B push. "Launching a new partner program was a challenge, but we’ve done a fair bit of research, and we’re quite hands-on with our partners in trying to understand what they want out of the partner program. The print industry is brutally competitive at times," Woodward explained at last year's CRN Channel Chiefs roundtable.

Australian distributors: Alloys, Dynamic Supplies, Leader, Synnex, XIT

Past employers: Samsung, Cisco, Belkin, Cellnet, Ingram

Fast fact: One of the biggest developments for CA Technologies in the past year was an update to its CA Advantage Partner Program. The program was awarded a five-star rating from CRN USA.

They said: "We are looking for partners that specialise in agile, DevOps and identity or application security. Partners with a focus on automation and analytics are also desirable."

What's new? "For the first time ever, CA will provide some partners a choice in back-end rewards aligned with the types of business they transact – so they have the flexibility to choose to reinvest with business development funds, or take a direct rebate."

Australian distributor: Dicker Data

Past employers: NetIQ, Macquarie Telecom

They said: "We are looking for partners who have a common focus as us from a market perspective and are willing to invest in understanding and proactively positioning Check Point Security solutions across threat, mobile and cloud to customers. This activity will drive incremental business for both us and them if executed well."

What's new? "We have done well this year with our partner recruitment strategy. We have recruited a number of partners based on the above criteria who are now actively selling our security solutions successfully in the marketplace."

Australian distributors: Arrow ECS, Westcon-Comstor

Past employers: Oracle, Adobe, Microsoft, Symantec

Fast fact: Ridley stepped into this major role after long-time channel chief Jason Brouwers moved to the commercial sales role within Cisco. It was a homecoming for Ridley, who started at the networking vendor as a partner account manager in 2007. "As Cisco accelerates and continues our software transformation, we’d like to thank our partners for all their efforts and support, while encourage them to join us on this crucial journey."

They said: "Cisco strategically has and is moving from primarily a hardware offering, to a hybrid combination of hardware, software and services. In the Asia-Pacific region, it is crucial to have a partner organisation that can support and accelerate this transtition. Further, Cisco is also prioritising the transformation of resale. The launch of our new SMB focused portfolio of technology solutions, Cisco START, has also coincided with the rebranding of our SMB group to be volume focused."

What's new? "In Australia and New Zealand we will soon be launching new programs for partners, with details to be shared shortly, which have been developed to maximise the opportunity offered by digitisation and the growing number of businesses that are embarking on this ‘mission-critical’ transformation."

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Westcon-Comstor

Past employers: Macquarie Telecom, HP

Fast fact: After nearly 20 years at Cisco, McColm leapt to Citrix following the departure of channel chief Belinda Jurisic. "Being new, it looked to me like we had a great existing partner base and we simply needed to go deeper with them, and be more relevant to their business and customers."

They said: "Right now I am hiring and expanding my team, while also reviewing our partner segmentation and growth opportunities – be that geographical, by technology, certifications, or partner types that can value-add to our ecosystem such as ISVs, cloud service providers or speciality partners in areas like security, content and collaboration management or networking."

What's new? "We have developed some great incentive programs to support our partners' profitability and will continue to support their ability to leverage these programs. In line with that, this year we removed the barriers to become a Citrix partner and reward all partners with significant upfront discount through our net new partner sourced program for those developing new Citrix business."

Australian distributors: Rhipe, Dicker Data, Tech Data

Past employers: Cisco, DEC

Fast fact: Lewis took the top channel role at Commvault in July after a career that included Dell, HP, HPE and, most recently, a brief stint at Canon.

They said: Commvault is "always on the lookout for a variety of partners across a number of geographies, industries and business models to ensure our customers have access to best-in-class service, delivered in a variety of ways, no matter what their needs".

Australian distributors: Nextgen Distribution, Tech Data, ACA Pacific

Past employers: Canon, HPE, Dell, Insight, Compaq, IBM

They said: Asked to highlight why IT firms should consider partnering with Concur, Warner points to three benefits. "One, we are part of SAP. Two, we are heavily targeting small business successfully. And three, we run a direct sales referral model with our partners which is quite different for most licence software companies, but extremely effective for cloud software."

What's new? "In the last 12 months Concur Australia has doubled our channel revenue year-on-year and have been supported by some very key partnerships to fuel that growth. We have also had some of our first key wins inside state and federal governments in Australia and New Zealand."

Australian distributor: Nextgen Distribution

Past employer: Seeker Software

Fast fact: Doyle's move into the channel role is only recent, having taken the position in May.

They said: "Crestron is separated from the competition through its 100 percent channel approach in ANZ, and the valuable support we provide our more than 200 partners. We work closely with our partners across Australia and New Zealand to best ensure the end-user experience is of the highest standard with our products.

What's new? Doyle gives a hat tip to partner Concept AV, which helped deliver a prestige project. "Crestron has partnered with multiple new clients this year, including the Australian Rugby Union. As the ARU’s official enterprise technology partner, the new partnership with ARU will extend to any new facility-focused project by ARU and the Wallabies, where creating areas for collaboration and communication is central to the initiative."

Past employers: Rutledge AV, GAV, InterContinental

They said: "Those partners that have joined the program all have track records in successfully delivering enterprise-level identity or broader security solutions across multiple vertical markets and are able to offer quantifiable value and drive positive outcomes for enterprise organisations – especially around building robust privileged account security programs."

What's new? "CyberArk launched several strategic new partnerships this year that have already delivered high-profile customers and tangible results. We have also grown the CyberArk business significantly with several existing partners, which is equally important. On the enablement front, we have increased the number of formally trained partner engineers by more than 300 percent in the past calendar year, which forms the basis of our mutual success."

Australian distributor: M.Tech

Past employers: Aruba, Juniper, Symantec, CA, McAfee

They said: "Cyberpower Systems is always looking for strong and loyal partners to win business as a team. Cyberpower Systems is a channel-only vendor and we pride ourselves on never going direct to end users – unlike most of our competitors. This is reinforced by an active sales team that always put our partners first."

What's new? Asked about recent wins, Hartvigsen says, "There are many, but the ongoing government panel contract in Northern Territory and Deptarment of Education in Tasmania stand out."

Australian distributors: Bluechip Infotech, Certa One

Past employers: Bluechip, Cellnet, Hitech Distribution

Fast fact: Cylance partners in ANZ have grown helped the infosec vendor grow its customer base by more than 700 percent in the past 12 months.

They said: "We look for partners with specialisations such as Citrix, VMware, security design, penetration testing, or vertical expertise. Cylance is currently seeking and evaluating partnerships within the education sector in ANZ."

What's new? "From a channel training and enablement perspective, Cylance has recently launched its Engage program, which has been extremely well received. More than 60 ANZ partner engineers have been certified in Cylance’s artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, the first AI and machine learning security certification in the ANZ market today."

Australian distributor: Arrow ECS

Past employer: Aquion

Fast fact: Datto launched in Australia in 2015 with Bergl as its first local employee and this year has increased its local partner base to 240 MSPs, up from 100 in December 2016, servicing approximately 1500 SMBs across Australia and New Zealand.

They said: "At Datto, we are continuing to strengthen our channel operations across Australia and New Zealand, looking for local MSP partners in every state and territory to service small to medium sized businesses throughout the region. In particular, Datto is looking to expand its operations in New Zealand. We have recently appointed a dedicated New Zealand channel manager to help grow our Kiwi partner base, expanding outside of Auckland where we initially focused our efforts."

What's new? "This growth has been reflected in Datto’s hardware revenue, which has increased [year-on-year] by 725 percent in Q1 2017."

Past employers: N-able, Eloqua/Oracle, Autotask

Fast fact: Wright joined Dell in 2015 to help spearhead the vendor's pivot toward partned-led business, and in December 2016 was given the role of running the combined partner community after Dell's acquisition of storage giant EMC.

They said: "The key focus for the development of our channel lies in partnering with companies who work in hybrid cloud integration, digital transformation, security, big data, IoT, as well as a range of industry vertical specialists."

What's new? "Geoff and his team have listened to partners and have planned new updates and improvements to the program," a Dell EMC spokesperson says. "This includes new tools to make it easier to be a Dell EMC partner, simplifying processes and increasing profitability through new and larger benefits."

Australian distributors: Tech Data, Ingram Micro, Dicker Data

Past employer: Microsoft

They said: "D-Link has four separate channels, including business solutions, national retail, service provider and volume business, and I have a national channel manager for each segment."

What's new? "Our focus in the business solutions channel is to extend not just great value-for-money hardware and services, but importantly higher profit outcomes for our partners than our competition."

Australian distributors: MMT, Synnex, Ingram, Bluechip, Pacific Datacom

Past employers: Cisco, D-Link

They said: Dynatrace looking for "partner businesses focusing on digital transformation, DevOps, hybrid cloud or customer experience would all be candidates in which we would consider partnering throughout ANZ".

What's new? "Last fiscal year we partnered with a managed hosting organisation that has transformed their business into a managed cloud services provider. Upon partnering and helping them with internal efficiencies, together we have been able to uplift their offering and market competitiveness as we focus on customers transforming their business for the digital age."

Past employer: Sumo Logic

They said: "At Eaton, we are constantly looking for channel partners who can leverage our industry-leading products and services to drive growth within key customer accounts. The companies we choose to collaborate with, bring value to our mutual customers through distinct offerings and experience in many different technologies and markets."

What's new? Since joining Eaton, Swadling says he has "played an instrumental role in delivering growth strategies for the Eaton enterprise channel, within 10 months of joining the company". This includes the launch of its micro data centre and industrialised portfolio as well as achieving wins with large enterprise partners within federal government departments.

Australian distributors: Bluechip Infotech, BMS, Ingram Micro, Synnex

Past employers: NPS, Network Data Solutions

Fast fact: Sticker has been tasked with overhauling the partner engagement for ERP vendor Epicor since joining in October 2016. He has "rebooted and restructured a very dormant ecosystem of resellers into an engaged network with the same access, tools and visibility on all internal resources as the direct teams", he tells CRN.

They said: The company is actively seeking resellers in Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland, Sticker tells CRN.

What's new? He points to Epicor's recent international partner awards, where two of the six trophies went to Newcastle-based Business Information Systems Consulting and IT .

Past employers: Eli Lilly, Merck Sharp & Dohme

Fast fact: Conversations in the data centre space have moved beyond the infrastructure itself and Equinix is now centred around facilitating high levels of interconnectivity.

They said: "Ideal Equinix partners assist companies to architect and deploy private, public and hybrid cloud solutions enabling transformative access to people, locations, technologies, clouds and data."

What's new? "The first half of 2017 has been a transformative year for Equinix and our partner community," says Hastings. "Together we have developed new solutions sets and found relevance across a broad range of customers and industries. At the same time, we have worked with partners to solve enormous challenges for some of the world's largest companies companies, rolling out solutions that we may not have otherwise seen."

Past employers: Access Networks, NextDC

Fast fact: ESET signed a distribution deal with Anyware Corporation this year in April to expand its security footprint in the region.

They said: "My role is to provide all the support and commitment to the partners by helping them grow their business. This year we are increasing our channel coverage in Australia across SMB and enterprise covering all verticals."

What's new? "Recently, ESET also worked with one of its top partners to win a large encryption opportunity for a global recruitment organisation allowing their users to stay protected."

Australian distributors: Anyware Corporation, Microbe, Open Channel Solutions

Past employers: Trend Micro, McAfee, HPE

Fast fact: Extreme Networks has been on an acquisition tear in the past 12 months, buying Zebra's wireless LAN business, Avaya's networking business and certain assets from Brocade.

They said: "We are looking for partners that want to come with us on our journey as we become a leading pure-play, end-to-end networking vendor. We are looking to do more in the enterprise space across ANZ."

What's new? "It is an exciting time at Extreme – with our acquistions – we are bullish about the growth we will achieve in the next 12 months."

Australian distributors: Arrow ECS, Sektor, Hills

Past employers: Avaya, Frontrange, NEC

They said: "At F5, we’re looking to expand beyond our traditional data centre and network partners to a new and exciting breed of security-focused plus cloud enablement/migration partners."

What's new? "F5 has also reinvigorated channel sales and technical enablement programs to accelerate a new partner’s time to revenue, as well as enhanced our Unity partner program, with one simple goal of helping partners sell more and earn more on services from each sale."

Australian distributors: Arrow ECS, Westcon-Comstor

Past employers: Motorola, Ingram Micro

Fast fact: Following the departures of head of channels Lani Edwards in August 2016 and director of channel and commercial sales Sean Kopelke in November 2016 "2017 has seen the expansion of the FireEye ANZ channel team to continue to serve and support our new and existing partners," says Barton. "Both Michael Coleman and Ken Cartwright joined the team April 2017."

They said: "The recent launch of Helix – FireEye's intelligence-led platform – provides a unique opportunity for [managed security service] partners to stop more threats while reducing the operational costs of security. FireEye Helix can seamlessly integrate and improve partner security operations for organisations of all sizes and types."

Australian distributors: Arrow ECS, Exclusive Networks

Past employers: Clearswift, Websense, Sonicwall, Sophos

Fast fact: Forcepoint was born in early 2016 out of the merger of Websense and Raytheon.

They said: "Forcepoint is looking to partner with organisations that specialise in security and who have the technical expertise and resources required to go to market and service our customers. Integrity, professionalism and loyalty are key for Forcepoint. We are happy to see our partners gain high margins on the business that they are driving with us, safe in the knowledge that their investment with us will always be protected."

What's new? The company won several multimillion-dollar deals this year, Kounlavongsa claims. "Our market share is growing and we have seen a great demand in the market for our next-gen firewall line of products."

Australian distributors: Tech Data, M.Tech, Orca Tech

Past employer: Juniper

Fast fact: In April, Fuji Xerox Printers we launched its new partner program, with three levels of certification – Silver, Gold and Platinum – each with a minimum hardware target commitment. The vendor also launched its entry-level partner program, Fuji Xerox Club.

They said: "We’re looking for partners that target small to medium businesses, which value the Fuji Xerox brand and our market-leading technologies and who will have a commitment to genuine Fuji Xerox supplies. This year we’ve also made it our priority to look for partners who can help us to expand our reach across the IT and systems integrator markets, opening up new avenues to grow."

What's new? "Through our extended partnership with Synnex announced in July, we’ve gained access to over 3,000 print resellers across Australia and have been able to further tap into the IT, tier 1 and tier 2 systems integrator spaces."

Australian distributors: Synnex, Alloys, Dynamic Supplies

Past employers: Oldfields, Avery Dennison, Alesco, Sharp

Fast fact: Fujitsu has been in talks with Lenovo about cooperating on PC design and manufacturing. The companies had been aiming to finalise an agreement by March, though were still in discussion in June.

What's new? Melbourne’s Multimedia Technology was selected as Fujitsu’s newest Australian distributor in May.

Australian distributors: MMT, Dicker Data

Fast fact: Genesys acquired Interactive Intelligence for US$1.4 billion in September 2016. Genesys said the purchase would allow the company to execute on its mission of powering the “world’s best customer experiences at scale, anytime, anywhere – over any channel, in the cloud and on-premise".

They said: "We are interested in working with partners who understand the digital behaviour of consumers today. We want to align with channel partners who have a deep understanding about the way consumers like to engage with businesses, and then tailor solutions into an offering that enhances the complete CX experience."

What's new? "The biggest achievement for us this year has been completing the integration of Interactive Intelligence with Genesys. This means that we have the world’s best partnering program and tools, which offer significant benefits for partners. We are a partner-led business and are committed to an indirect business model, which gives our partners comfort and certainty that they will not be competing against Genesys when securing deals."

Past employers: ShoreTel, UXC, PwC, Alcatel-Lucent

Fast fact: Gigamon technology delivers pervasive visibility into the modern network – spanning physical, virtual, SDN and cloud – for security and analytics technologies. Gigamon transacts all business via channel partners.

They said: "Our best partners are those advising and delivering these solutions to enterprise. We augment your portfolio in a non-competitive way with your existing vendors whilst delivering incredible return to your client and you technically and monitaritly."

What's new? "Due to customer sensitivity we are unable to share company details, however, we have had a great start to 2017 winning multiple landmark houshold name accounts who will act as great references wins in health, banking, federal government and more.

Australian distributor: Arrow ECS

Past employers: Trend Micro, RSA, Websense, Symantec

Fast fact: Google unveiled local availability of its Google Cloud Platform in July 2017, after hyping up its arrival for months. The tech giant offers three availability zones for the platform in Sydney. Services available at launch include compute, big data, storage and networking.

They said: "We are looking for partners with deep expertise in infrastructure, application development, big data and analytics, machine learning and messaging & collaboration."

What's new? "We listened to our partners and based on their feedback we have made changes to our parthership programs. This included removing product 'silos' so partners now qualify for status based on the entire Google Cloud portfolio. We are also investing heavily in helping partners develop sustainable and profitable Google Cloud offerings. This includes support for enablement plus financial incentives."

Past employers: AWS, VMware, Hewlett-Packard, Citrix

Fast fact: Devlin joined Hewlett Packard Enterprise through its acquisition of Simplivity. HPE announced the agreement to acquire hyperconverged vendor SimpliVity for US$650 million in January 2017, swiftly followed by its acquisition of Nimble Storage.

They said: "I’ve been working in smaller startup-style organisations for the last decade or so. In this environment, every customer is a new customer and net new customers are very hard to find. The best thing about being back at HPE is the warmth and loyalty customers and partners have for HPE technology. When we call end-users they are delighted to hear from us. When I talk to partners, we talk about leveraging the strength of our vision to open new doors together. If we focus on growth in partnership with the channel, we will do so much more together than we ever could alone."

What's new? Devlin stepped into the role vacated by Chris Trevitt, HPE's South Pacific SMB and channel director, who departed suddenly in August. Nicholas Lambrou, South Pacific partner manager, also left the company.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Dicker Data, Arrow ECS, Lynx Technologies

Past employers: Simplivity, Ruckus Wireless, Watchguard

Fast fact: In the public safety space, HDS recently signed an agreement with Geutebruck, one of the world’s leading physical security and camera surveillance companies, to jointly develop and sell the next generation of surveillance and security solutions, including the integration of Hitachi's live face match and video analytic suite.

They said: "The Hitachi of today is vastly different from the company we were five, even one year ago. We are moving fast towards a leadership position in the IoT era, leveraging the 100-year heritage in operational technology (OT) together with 50 years’ experience in IT across Hitachi’s 900-plus group companies. We are looking for partners that embrace this rapid transformation with us."

What's new? "Our new distribution agreement with Dicker Data builds on strong ties with VMware and Veritas to deliver pre-integrated, end-to-end solutions for Australian enterprises. Dicker Data launched a new enterprise data unit that will focus on this type of offering, and also increasingly the go-to-market for IoT solution through the channel."

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Lynx Technologies

Past employer: RSA

They said: "HP looks to continue to work very closely with a diverse range of partners with different capabilities, locations, and customer/industry strengths. As we move forward, partners strong in combining services and hardware together, as well as others with security, mobility, or managed print capabilities will be HP's focus areas."

What's new? "HP is very proud of the contribution that our partner network has made to our joint success and growth. This growth has enabled HP to continue to grow its marketshare for PC & Print allowing us to remain in number one position in Australia."

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Synnex, Bluechip Infotech, Sektor

Past employers: Leading Solutions, Microarts

Fast fact: Richardson has stepped into the role in March 2017 following the departure of Huawei Australia's channel director, Leo Lynch, who joined backup and disaster recovery vendor StorageCraft as director of sales.

They said: "[Partner engagement] is about understanding what the rules of engagement are and enforcing them with a governance over the top. But it really goes back to calling it out and getting engaged early, because if you get engaged early, we’re helping you do the sale, and once we’re engaged you’ll find that we will support you in pushing back on those other areas of conflict."

What's new? Wagga Wagga-based Professional Data Kinetics was a finalist in the CRN Impact awards for a massive Huawei deployment that marked the vendor's biggest unified communications deployment yet in Australia.

Australian distributors: Synnex, iCITA, CertaOne, Madison Technologies

Past employers: IBM, Toshiba, Lenovo

Fast fact: Peach joined IBM in September 2017, replacing Rhody Burton who left in May. 

He said: “There is a huge opportunity for our partners to work with IBM, and leverage new technologies such as Watson and cloud, underpinned by security."

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Meier Business Systems

Past employers: Pure Storage, Servian, EMC

Fast fact: Informatica signed an exclusive agreement with Tech Data as the vendor's first Australian and New Zealand distributor. It gave the distie access to Informatica's full suite of data management products including cloud, big data, IoT, master data management, data governance, data integration, data quality and data security solutions.

They said: "It [Informatica's new partner program] will drive business growth by aligning our big data, cloud and data management solutions with the domain expertise of our global and regional partners. I look forward to driving a partner-first approach in 2017."

Australian distributor: Tech Data

Past employers: Pitney Bowes, EMC

Fast fact: Raj, a channel veteran has stepped in to help manage Intel's local operations following the departure of managing director Kate Burleigh.

They said: "In my experience, disties play a very crucial role. Very simply, we cannot actually reach every interested partner. Maybe the top tier, but disties have the important role of reaching the breadth. So disties play a very crucial role in every transition we have successfully done in the channel." (Speaking at the 2016 CRN Pipeline planning roundtable)

What's new? Intel's booming data centre business has catapulted Intel as "the rising force of the data revolution across different industries," CEO Brian Krzanich told investors in June. He said the response to its Xeon scalable server processor platform had been "extremely positive".

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Synnex, Dicker Data, Braemac

They said: "Juniper Networks has always been a channel-led company, and we’ve differentiated our program by focusing our resources that fuel the business of building industry-leading networking and cloud solutions. One specific area of focus for us at Juniper Networks Australia has been that of widening our scope and depth of security-specific partners, given our launch of the software defined secure networking (SDSN) and cloud partners platforms – through which we believe we can offer the most trusted cloud platform for our partners' services."

What's new? "The biggest accomplishment I am personally most proud of would be the re-design of the channel team here in Juniper Networks Australia from the ground up. While building on the foundations put-in-place over the years, we’ve also significantly fine-tuned various organisational elements such as structure, processes and deliverables, in order to best give us the focus and capabilities required to address the needs and demands of our partners today."

Australian distributors: Westcon-Comstor, Tech Data, Exclusive Networks

Past employer: Avnet

Fast fact: Kaspersky has a two-hour long role-playing games, dubbed Kaspersky Industrial Protection Simulation (KIPS), that establishes an understanding between decision-makers – CxO, business and IT leaders – to change their perception of the problem. Nguyen calls it a "a fun training game we want to share more with partners".

They said: "We are looking for partners who want to have a higher level of education, awareness and training in cyber security."

What's new? "Scoring two separate deals with Australia’s largest telecommunications and media company by selling Kaspersky Lab’s well-renowned advance persistent threats (APT) reporting services that generated a bill of almost a quarter million."

Australian distributor: Exclusive Networks

Past employer: Optus

They said: The company is looking for "telco and mid to large MSP partners; tier one and two partners" and "cloud adoptive clients" with "large and complex application sets". Holland calls KEMP a "growing company that fit in with the trends of today – cloud versus on prem versus hybrid solution stack".

What's new? "Signing, onboarding and scaling up Rhipe for all telco and MSP customers. Gained the largest single the deal in KEMP Technologies history, leading to a regional year-on-year growth of 256 percent."

Australian distributors: Sapply, Rhipe

Past employers: Webroot, Applaud, Insight

Fast fact: Konica Minolta is purchasing US diagnostics company Ambry Genetics in a deal valued at up to US$1 billion, the largest-ever deal for the photocopier maker, which has been seeking to diversify away its office equipment business.

They said: "Our objective is to create highly evolved and endlessly beneficial products for the IoT age. Tailor-made innovation for unique issues throughout a wide variety of workplaces is the foundation of the new Konica Minolta."

What's new? "As Konica Minolta commences the establishment of an IoT business model we will be looking to expand our go-to-market model to include channels that will complement this new direction."

Past employers: EFI, Fuji Xerox Australia, Xerox

Fast fact: Lenovo has separated into two divisions: PC and Smart Devices (PCSD) and the Data Centre Group (DCG).

They said: “I am excited about the opportunity to work collaboratively with our channel community to strengthen our existing business partnerships and plan together to enable future growth."

What's new? Lau's is a new role that brings together the retail, channel and SMB divisions of Lenovo’s business into one team. It covers the work previously overseen by ANZ channel director Margrith Appleby, who revealed her departure from the position in March 2017.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, Synnex, Tech Data

Past employers: HP, JVC

Fact file: Lexmark appointed Alloys as a national distributor of its printer hardware in December 2016.

What’s new? In the US, Lexmark announced a ‘testing assistant’ for the K-12 and higher education markets. It allows teachers to import class rosters, create test answer sheets, scan and grade completed tests.

Australian distributors: Alloys, Synnex

Past employers: CarPilots, Hostway Australia

What’s new? Linksys launched its Velop system in Australia, the first Tri-Band modular wi-fi system that can be installed in various mesh configurations. “Timed perfectly for upgrading to the NBN, Velop eliminates trouble spots and helps you get that speed and full-strength signal in every corner of your house,” he said.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Dicker Data

Past employers: Microsoft, McAfee, Scholastic

Fast fact: This year, Malwarebytes moved away from a direct sales model and launched a two-tier channel model, followed by launching its first partner program for ANZ.

They said: "It will be hard to believe but we have close to 800 registered partners in Australia. We look for value-added partners who are the trusted advisors for their customers, who offer managed services. We are looking towards expanding our reach in Western Australia, South Australia and regional Australia. Some of the key target verticals for us are education, government and healthcare and we are looking at partners who are strong within these verticals."

What's new? "We sign up more than 30 new partners every month and that is because of our company’s leading advance malware prevention and remediation solutions. Malwarebytes offers fantastic upfront margin along with additional deal registration margin to the partners."

Australian distributors: Cloud Distribution, Orca Tech

Past employers: Sophos, Trend Micro, Avnet, Websense

Fast fact: McAfee was reborn following the sale of a 51 percent stake of the McAfee to TPG Capital. McAfee emerged as a US$2 billion standalone security vendor for the first time since its US$7.7 billion sale to Intel in 2010.

They said: "[I'm new to the role within McAfee, seeing significant opportunity and upside to the business with our customers to deliver real value. Many customers and partners are eager to hear about the 'new' McAfee and our evolving offerings."

What's new? Boreham says that key achievements this year include "the launch of Open DXL, a shared security platform with key complimentary vendors including Aruba, Checkpoint and Cisco; the appointment of new value-added distributor in New Zealand and the growth of commercial acceleration program via our distribution partners".

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Westcon-Comstor

Past employers: Aruba, Avaya, VExpress

Fast fact: With the completion of the Micro Focus and HPE Software spin-merger, the newly formed entity becomes the seventh-largest pure-play software company in the world.

They said: "We are currently recruiting a broad range of partners including local, global and regional system integrators, through to solution providers, service providers, resellers and ISVs within both Australia and New Zealand. Micro Focus recently appointed Nextgen as its master distributor in Australia and New Zealand in order to meet growing customer demand."

What's new? "After a recent review of our distribution model and a subsequent consolidation, we are excited to announce that we have appointed Nextgen as our master distributor in Australia and New Zealand in order to meet growing customer demand."

Australian distributor: Nextgen Distribution

Past employers: HP, Oracle, CA, Progress Software

Fast fact: Leigh was recently appointed One Commercial Partner lead for Australia as part of a major global restructure at Microsoft. He was previously director of small, midmarket solutions & partners (SMS&P).

They said: "At the highest level, we are bringing all of the partner resources from across the business to sit together in one organisation called One Commercial Partner. We used to have partner people in our enterprise business, we used to have partner people in our education business, we had an ISV team that sat within our developer evangelism team – we're bringing all those people together."

What's new? Other new appointments in Microsoft's One Commercial Partner team include Tony Wilkinson as partner business and development lead, Claudia McIntosh as partner management lead, and Steven Miller as channel management lead.

Australian distributors: Ingram, Synnex, Dicker, Rhipe, Arrow, Tech Data, SaaSplaza

Fast fact: MobileIron announced earlier this year that it was throwing its hat in the IoT ring with an internet of things division focused on healthcare, energy, manufacturing and automotive. The company was targeting to have an IoT product ready for sale some time in 2017.

What's new? MobileIron recognised Optus, Mobilise IT and CDTS Australia as its top Australian partners in June. Melbourne-based Mobilise IT was ANZ Partner of the Year and APJ Innovation Partner of the Year, Optus was named the ANZ Partner of the Year and consultancy firm CDTS Australia was APJ Federal Partner of the Year.

Australian distributor: Arrow ECS

Past employers: Acronis, Avnet, Veeam, Ingram

Fast fact: Late last year Motorola Solutions acquired privately held Melbourne-based mobile applications developer Gridstone, which develops mobile applications across different platforms and specialises in native iOS applications for public safety agencies, governments and enterprise.

They said: "Our business continues to change and evolve from being a pure distribution business into a software-led, IT company. This is reflected in our solutions which integrate narrowband and broadband communications using intelligent middleware as well as the growing number of applications we are providing for our DMR radio portfolio. Through MOTOTRBO we also have an accredited app developer program for our product sets which we can continue to grow and support at scale."

What's new? "Through our partner Progility Technologies, we are delivering a retail management solution incorporating Motorola Solutions’ CLP device that is fit-for-purpose for the retail sector and is experiencing considerable growth within that vertical in Australia. With the press of a button customers can call for immediate assistance from anywhere in the store, which helps to reduce lost sales through ‘walk outs’. The technology is discrete is also enables staff to manage spills or other in-store incidents without having to make noisy PA broadcasts."

Fast fact: MuleSoft completed its initial public offering in March and now boasts more than 1100 customers, including EnergyAustralia, Village Roadshow and Ricoh Australia in Australia.

They said: "MuleSoft works with consulting firms and specialist VARs. We work most successfully with partners who have specific experience in Integration and digital transformation, working to deliver business outcomes for our customers which address their future needs. Our focus for partner expansions will be in Western Australia, Queensland and the ACT, to cover all verticals and solutions sets."

What's new? "Winning Service Victoria and Service NSW with Deloitte. These showcased how successful a joint proposition we have for government and shared service together. In the last 12 months, MuleSoft rolled out a new partner competency program. The new partner competency program has 12 separate competency tracks designed to boost the skill set of pre-sales architects and engineers. Attaining a competency allows MuleSoft partners to differentiate themselves to customers by showing expertise in a specific technology or solution area."

Past employers: Sophos, EMC

Fast fact: Having spent most of his career at Telstra, Masterton was appointed as NBN's first IT channel leader in May 2017.

They said: "At NBN, we are looking to develop relationships with a broad spectrum of ICT suppliers and consultants across the country. We want to enable them with knowledge and education about the NBN network, which will empower them to provide informed advice to end customers regarding digital business solutions enabled by the new network."

What's new? "Development of the ICT channel is a new initiative for the NBN. I am privileged to have the opportunity to contribute to this massive national infrastructure project and to build the ICT channel program from the ground up."

Past employer: Telstra

Fast fact: NetApp underwent a management reshuffle in Australia in late 2016, with Glenn McPherson promoted to the role of managing director of Australian & New Zealand as Steve Manley moved up to a regional position.

They said: " Ours is an expensive practice to be in. Hardware, and particularly storage, is not a cheap practice to have to resource for. We have a ‘less is more’ strategy. I think 93 percent of my revenue went through 25 partners last year. I don’t have a long tail of small partners doing little bits and bobs," James explained at last year's CRN Channel Chiefs roundtable.

What's new? NetApp in June made its long-awaited entry into the burgeoning hyperconverged infrastructure market by unveiling an offering combining its SolidFire all-flash storage technology with NetApp's traditional scale and cross-management capabilities.

Australian distributors: Westcon-Comstor, Arrow ECS

Past employers: Citrix, Ericom, Nortel, Commander

Fast fact: Foster spent much of his career with channel partners in the communications and networking space, including CommsForce, Celemtrix and NetTest.

They said: Foster says one channel highlight from the past year was "400 percent growth in single partner by increasing mind share, education and assistance with product set".

Australian distributors: Pacific Datacom, Secnet, Anixter, Plexnet

Past employer: Celemetrix

Fast fact: NextDC partners with more than 350 organisations in the ICT community, as well as suporting end customers in professional services, legal, media, finance, mining and government.

They said: "NextDC's partner preferred business model continues to resonate with the Australian channel and we've grown our partner base by more than 20 percent over the last 12 months. Pleasingly, that growth is largely incremental as more partners are providing hybrid cloud solutions to their customer base."

What's new? "AWS have chosen NextDC to host its first two Direct Connect on-ramps outside of Sydney – being in Melbourne and Canberra."

Past employers: Adobe, Symantec, Veritas, Novell

They said: "We have many tremendous partners supporting our midmarket customer and over the last 18 months we have worked very hard developing some strategic relationships to help support some of our largest enterprise customers. We continue to look for partners who have solid expertise designing and supporting converge infrastructure solutions."

What's new? "This our second year into our partner program and the feedback has been extremely positive. Partners have loved the simplicity in the program and the level of support provided, we extended this in 2016-17 to include our strongest growing market, service providers."

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Nextgen Distribution

Past employers: NetApp, Thomas Duryea

They said: "Nuance is looking to enhance our channel ecosystem in the area of document capture and workflow automation. We are also seeing more opportunities for channel partners to capitalise on the growth we are experiencing with our Power PDF solution portfolio."

What's new? In October 2016, Taylor was promoted to role of VP Asia Pacific, taking over the entire responsibility for Nuance's document imaging business in APAC.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, PrintSolv

Past employers: Siemens, Dematic, Nettest

Fast fact: Nuix is an Australian data analytics vendor. Its technology played a big role in analysing data from last year’s massive ‘Panama Papers’ leak.

He said: One recent highlight was “expanding the Nuix customer base via new partners across Australia and Asia”, adding that Nuix is looking for “technology partners, system integrators and service partners”.

Past employers: AXS-One, Computron

Fast fact: Nutanix has unveiled a strategic relationship with Google that will allow certain Nutanix-based hyper-converged infrastructure services to run natively on the Google Public Cloud.

What's new? Long-time Dell executive Jacob Pereira was hired as Nutanix's channel director for Asia-Pacific and Japan earlier this year. Subsequently, channel chief Niall O'Gorman left the company for a role at AWS in September 2017.

He said: "We’ve grown our partner base by 30 percent throughout the last financial year to support the approximate 30 percent growth Nutanix has experienced worldwide. Even more encouraging is the growth we’re seeing from within – existing focus partners like Dimension Data, Thomas Duryea Logicalis, MOQ Digital, Qirx and our OEM partners such as Lenovo and Dell. These partners bet big and bet early on Nutanix, and I’m delighted to see their investment in us is paying off."

Australian distributors: Tech Data, Exclusive Networks

Past employer: Dell

Fast fact: Okta was one of the first big cybersecurity IPOs of the year when it hit the public market in April looking to raise US$187 million at a US$1.5 billion valuation.

They said: "Okta partners can resell our technology so there’s a very good margin to be made reselling subscription licenses. Okta partners can also make money reselling our packaged service offerings, including our enablement training services. We’ve got all the typical things that you would find in a channel program: funds, technical support, a proper onboarding enablement plan, links to certification. We’ve got all those necessary components in place," Maglitto told CRN earlier this year.

What's new? Earlier this year, Okta announced partnerships with three new partners across Australia and New Zealand: MOQdigital, Airloom and Unify Solutions. Okta said the partnerships would allow it to increase its ANZ footprint, and to move into new sectors such as retail, manufacturing, transportation and the public sector.

Past employers: IBM, RSA, Oracle

Fast fact: Optus has hired former Telstra retail executive Stuart Bird to front its wholesale and satellite division. Bird will replace Robert Parcell who retired at the end of April. Optus chief Allan Lew said Bird’s focus would initially be spent “expanding Optus’ wholesale NBN offering, delivering a competitive suite of mobile products and services for our wholesale partners, and expanding our satellite customer base across Australasia”.

They said: "We are quantifiably the market leader in wholesale mobile in Australia by miles. Our wholesale strategy is complementary because our name brand will never corner every market, but if we find partners that can, it is symbiotic – we get paid wholesale dues and the MVNOs leverage the capacity and networks investments from us. That’s the Optus wholesale strategy, and it works,” Castro wrote in an Optus blog in 2016.

What's new? Optus plans to spend $1 billion on expanding its mobile network across regional Australia over the next 11 months, in what the telco is calling its biggest regional capital expenditure spend in 25 years. The investment seeks to fund 500 new mobile sites across the country, including 114 sites on the government’s mobile black spots list.

Past employers: Vodafone, BT Group, Telstra

Fast fact: NetSuite's range of specialist partners across APAC include Fusion 5, Fronde, Klugo Group, JCurve, Annexa, Cloud Tech, PGE Solutions and Introv.

They said: "We work with partners who provide coverage in verticals, specific geographies and specialised skillsets."

What's new? Since the acquisition by Oracle, Australian partners are seeing the two programs come together. Earlier this year, UXC Red Rock, Klugo Group and JCurve told CRN they hoped to capitalise on new opportunities out of the merger.

Past employers: Oracle, SAP, Salesforce

They said: "We are doubling down on our existing partners – same partners, but a broader set of industry-leading solutions. This rewards those that have invested in the partnership."

What's new? "The majority of our wins are a migration from legacy security vendors and we expect this trend to accelerate."

Australian distributors: Arrow ECS, Westcon-Comstor

Past employers: NetApp, Fosters Brewing Group, Regent

Fast fact: In May, Polycom added Ingram Micro to its lineup of Australian distributors in an effort to expand its line of cloud-based solutions. The unified communications vendor specifically mentioned its partnership with Microsoft, which Polycom partners with on solutions for Skype for Business, Office 365, SharePoint and Exchange.

They said: "I'm responsible for the acquisition, management and development of strong partnerships with organisations across ANZ. This includes major service providers such as Telstra, Optus, Dimension Data, Vocus and Vodafone but also upcoming Microsoft partners such as Icomm and Insync."

What's new? "Polycom's Strategic Alliance – through which Polycom offers native integration into Microsoft Skype for Business and Office 365 has positioned Polycom as a key player in the market as more and more customer make the choice to move to Microsoft cloud solutions."

Australian distributors: Transition Systems Australia, Ingram Micro

Past employer: Telstra

Fast fact: Pronto Xi is used by 1700 customers globally, including Leica, Petstock, Natures Organics, Ainsworth Game Technology, Retail Prodigy Group and Shimano Oceania. Its 2015-16 revenue was $74.7 million and operating profit before tax rose 13 percent to $12.6 million.

They said: "Our partners all have significant experience in selling, implementing and supporting ERP software. The breadth and depth of capabilities within Pronto Xi give our partners the ability to broaden their solution set and target a wider spectrum of customers in diverse industries."

What's new? "Much of our investment is focused on the areas of cloud, analytics and mobile applications, ensuring we deliver smarter and more flexible ERP solutions. Cloud is a major growth area for Pronto with 80 percent of new Pronto customers choosing to implement Pronto Xi cloud ERP or benefit from managed services."

Past employers: Australian Retailers Assoc., Coles Myer

Fast fact: Pure Storage is heavily focusing on Flash Stack, its converged infrastructure venutre with Cisco, which was expanded at Cisco Live Melbourne earlier this year. Pure Storage recently appointed Dicker Data as its newest Australian distributor, as part of Dicker's strategy to build an enterprise data practice.

They said: "Pure Storage remains selective when choosing which partners to go to market with and only invests in mutually beneficial, high-quality relationships that result in high sales participation, accelerated growth, and increased profitability. In ANZ, we are especially interested in those with extensive experience and alliances with strategic partners such as Cisco."

What's new? "In the first half of this year we have seen almost 50 percent of our business has been channel-led and many of our partners are profiting from the success and growth of our platform by their top placing in Industry awards such as the CRN Fast50."

Australian distributors: Arrow ECS, Dicker Data

Past employers: NetApp, 3Com, Nortel

Fast fact: Qlik works with 1700 partners globally to serve over 40,000 customers in more than 100 countries.

They said: "Qlik partners are extensions of our team and are engaged in end-customer accounts from the very start. To this end, we spend considerable time in recruiting partners and understanding what motivates them to ensure we are aligned on all fronts. This helps our sales team to work intricately with channel partners to go after deals of importance to both businesses, and support partner lead generation, sales, and marketing efforts."

What's new? "Qlik has experienced 40 percent year-on-year growth in the Asia Pacific. We’ve also grown our partner network – with almost 50 percent more partners in 2017 than 2016. With the channel at the heart of our business development, we’ve seen 40 percent year-on-year growth in our channel business since 2013."

Past employers: Serena Software, CA, Deloitte, CorVu

They said: "We are looking to recruit middleware partners and cloud platform partners. In addition to this, system integrators to help customers on the digital transformation journey."

What’s new? Red Hat recently handed Tech Data the distribution of its Red Hat Mobile Application Platform.

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Rhipe

Past employer: Microsoft

Fast fact: Ricoh has 82 privately owned dealer business partners and two distributors in Australia for Ricoh printers.

They said: "Ricoh needs partners that can diversify their solution offering and extend their capabilities to offer the full suite of workplace technologies through print, integrated workflow and connect and collaboration solutions."

What's new? "This year we have retired the Lanier brand in Australia. Dealers that have transitioned to the Ricoh brand are able to bring a stronger focus to the market and are offering a broader portfolio of solutions to their customers."

Past employers: Gwent Police, CDI Event Management

Fast fact: Riverbed in April announced it would acquire wireless specialist Xirrus in a move to boost Riverbed's software-defined WAN and cloud capabilities. Riverbed plans to leverage Xirrus technology to further extend SteelConnect, its SD-WAN offering, to the wireless network edge.

They said: A highlight of the year was "strategically working with partners to grow their business culminating in record revenue and profitability performance", De Jesus tells CRN.

Australian distributors: Arrow ECS (Riverbed), Bluechip Infotech (Xirrus)

Past employers: NetApp, Avaya

Fast fact: Yell joined RSA just over one year ago and led several new initiatives, including channel consolidation and the introduction of its revamped SecurWorld partner program and a new alliance partner program.

They said: "RSA works with a range of partners including systems integrators, resellers, consultants and advisors. We are always interested in discussing the potential for a partnership with security specialists that sell, implement and deliver solutions across our core areas: threat detection and response; identity and access management; governance, risk and compliance; and fraud prevention."

What's new? "We are pivoting our channel to focus on driving incremental new business and this year we have seen a significant increase in the number of new customers our partners have secured. In line with this change, three of our Australian partners – Dicker Data, Content Security and Loop Security – were recently recognised as top RSA partners. Australia had the most partners receive awards of all countries in the Asia Pacific region."

Australian distributor: Dicker Data

Past employers: TeleSign, Autodesk, Symantec, Fujitsu

Fast fact: Ongoing change has been a fact of life for Ruckus since its acquisition by Brocade in 2016. Brocade is now being acquired by Broadcom, and is looking to sell off its IP networking business, which includes Ruckus, to Arris International.

They said: "Clients are constantly looking for ways to stand out against the competition by doing things differently. Ruckus Wireless continues to embrace partners that challenge the status quo and deliver solutions that create unique value propositions for enterprises and institutions. In the next 12 months, we will be rolling out a re-invigorated channel program which will enhance the existing program and deliver additional value to both our distributors and partners."

What's new? "Ensuring the seamless integration of the Brocade ICX switching portfolio into the Ruckus product family added not only a significant new revenue stream for all Ruckus partners, but they were also able to leverage the complementary product sets to deliver truly differentiated business outcomes in diverse locations such as a hotel room or a mine site."

Australian distributors: Hills, Ingram Micro, Tech Data

Past employer: Motorola Solutions

Fast fact: Some of its newer, cloud-based products such as Sage Live and Sage People are built on the Salesforce platform, and Sage says partners with existing Salesforce capabilities would be a good fit for these.

They said: "We’re seeing healthy demand for our Sage X3 ERP and Sage 300 products and we are keen to speak to potential partners with a strong professional services arm capable of implementing these successfully. Unlike many of our competitors, Sage does not compete against our partner channel with a direct salesforce to sell our software or deliver professional services. Rather, we partner with our channel."

What's new? "We held our most successful Sage Summit ever with 600-plus attendees in total including more than 35 partner organisations attending for training, customer meetings and a gala Partner Awards dinner. At the event we launched a number of innovative new products including Sage Live and Sage People."

Past employers: Tintri, NTT, Oracle, Sun, Avnet

Fast fact: In May, Salesforce introduced a US$50 million strategic fund earmarked for investment in the company's consulting partners. The Salesforce Ventures SI Trailblazer Fund will pour millions into systems integrators on the front lines of enterprise transformation, with an initial focus on those partners developing new practice areas or expanding across geographic regions.

They said: "Salesforce is invested in the growth of a diverse and agile partner ecosystem. Certifications are important although ensuring we work with our partners to align to customer success is critical. We are focused on partners who are collaborative and open to building a joint investment strategy and a mutual success plan."

What's new? "As other cloud companies move to reduce their partner footprint Salesforce is embracing the partner community to scale our business. We have just made some exciting announcements around equity investments in the Australian partner community, which reinforces our commitment to growing our footprint in region."

Past employers: ServiceNow, Dell, CSC

Fast fact: SAP in July promoted Colin Brookes as its new president and managing director of the Australian and New Zealand business six months after joining.

They said: "SAP will continue to focus on the mid-market, reinforcing our indirect and cloud-only go-to-market in general business. We’re are committed to helping our existing partners move with us to the cloud, whilst maintaining a focus on activating new partners as part of our cloud-only approach."

What's new? "Earlier this year we SAP announced a strategic partnership with Nextgen Distribution designed to fuel the Australian channel community’s capacity to grow in the cloud."

Australian distributors: Nextgen, Dicker Data (platform-only), ACA (platform-only)

Past employers: Westcon-Comstor

Fast fact: In a move to become the second largest unified communications as a service player in the market, Mitel struck a deal in July to acquire ShoreTel for US$530 million (A$665 million).

What's new? Ben Swanson, ShoreTel's ANZ regional director, says: "The most significant achievement this year to date was the successful launch of ShoreTel Connect Cloud into the Australian market. We had the entire company behind this investment, and now we have a true unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) platform available for customers."

Australian distributor: Dicker Data

Past employers: Communications Australia, EDS Australia

They said: "We are looking for value-added partners in verticals like healthcare, education, security and increasing our penetration into those markets."

What's new? "Socomec Australia is growing at a fast pace last few years and we are continuing to grow our presence further geographically. Customers can now access Socomec products through the few main electrical wholesalers who provides great coverage breath nationwide."

Australian distributors: Rexel Group, Mmem Group, L&H Group

Fast fact: It's been a year since SonicWall announced a private equity-driven split from Dell, and the company told CRN USA it had surpassed the "aggressive financial and operational metrics" it set for its first eight months as an independent company.

They said: "Looking for network security-focused partners especially in the ACT and South Australia."

What's new? "We have successfully launched our new partner program called Secure First in Australia during last quarter. This has resulted to a lot of new partners' registrations which shows the interest and trust partners have in SonicWALL technology."

Australian distributors: Hills, Ingram Micro

Past employer: Dell

Fast fact: The company recently launched its first Asia-Pacific & Japan partner advisory council with five representatives from ANZ.

They said: "We want to partner with anyone who is serious about security. Small or large, skilled or new entrants, we can help partners build their security strategy for their customers across network through to endpoint."

What's new? "We successfully launched an amazing new product to help our customers battle the continuing threat of ransomware. It has become our fastest-selling product in the company’s history. At a local level we have recently launched our new FY18 partner program, which continues to incentivise and reward our partners' loyalty to Sophos and continues to support our overall 100 percent channel model."

Australian distributors: Arrow ECS, Bluechip Infotech

Past employers: Ingram Micro, Arrow ECS

They said: Tng was named the head of partners for Asia-Pacific in May, with Splunk vice president, global partners Cheryln Chin saying: "Splunk is thrilled to welcome Pauline Tng as head of partners, APAC. Pauline joins Splunk with a strong background in channel strategy, partner and distribution management, as well as channel operations. Under Pauline’s leadership, Splunk is well positioned to accelerate its partner-first strategy across the region."

Australian distributor: DNA Connect

Past employers: Juniper Networks, Motorola, Lenovo, HP

Fast fact: Lynch joined StorageCraft after two years Huawei, following a career spanning channel roles at many of the industry's top vendors, including IBM, HP and EMC.

They said: Lynch says StorageCraft should appeal to "partners who are looking for a vendor who has business continuity solutions covering, physical, virtual and cloud environments.".

What's new? "The acquisition of Exablox in January 2017. Exablox is a simple, affordable, feature-rich and scale-out, object-based storage."

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, ACA Pacific

Past employers: Huawei, IBM, EMC, HP

Fast fact: Symantec is selling off its web security and public key infrastructure solutions business to DigiCert to allow the company to continue its focus on its Integrated Cyber Defense platform.

They said: Symantec is on the hunt for "partners who are committed to providing a security platform discussion with their customers that provides a better outcome and experience", says McPhillips.

What's new? "We have provided our channel with a simpler more rewarding partner program together with a new distribution strategy to make doing business with Symantec easy and more profitable."

Australian distributors: Arrow ECS, Dicker Data, Ingram Micro

Past employers: Intel Security, Riverbed, Commvault

Fast fact: Tableau announced subscription pricing in April, spanning desktop, server and online licensing models.

They said: "We like to work with partners that understand our mission and how we go to market. Tableau really meets at the crossroads of self service and data governance, which is a different message to many traditional BI organisations. Our successful partners really understand this and take this message to market."

What's new? "We are glad to work with partners that play essential roles to help transform how our customers derive impact and actionable insights from their data. One of them is RXP Services. In the February 2017 Tableau Partner Leadership Summit, RXP Services was awarded the 2016 Tableau Reseller of the Year ANZ. They also served as part of the partner advisory board."

Past employers: IBM, Open text, Autonomy

Fast fact: Telstra is expanding its Belong budget internet brand into a new mobile business. Chief executive Andy Penn said the new brand would target the price-sensitive segment, which he estimated to account for 25-30 percent of the mobile market by 2020.

They said: Speaking at the CRN Pipeline conference earlier this year, Schraa said Telstra had "put a big focus on our accreditation and getting partners accredited. We did that through the first phase of our program, and we have started work on the second phase to roll out this year. Getting the accreditation program up and running was a big milestone for us because it enables all of our partners to be clearly positioned within Telstra. We also put a lot of work into our managed services offerings."

Australian distributors: ARIA Technologies, VExpress, Dicker Data, TBS Distribution

Past employers: Sky, PwC

Fast fact: The company launched Tenable io earlier this year – the first "cyber exposure" platform to provide visibility into any asset on any computing platform. Tenable.io includes a fully documented and easy-to-use application programming interface (API) and software development kit (SDK) to help partners simplify the export and import of vulnerability, asset, threat and other data.

They said: "In 2016, Tenable’s momentum in ANZ and APAC grew substantially, with billings growing over 80 percent in 2016, higher than any other region. The number of partners selling Tenable products throughout APAC increased five times from 2015 to 2016, and new enterprise deals doubled in 2016 compared to 2015. Tenable’s momentum has continued into 2017."

What's new? "Moving forward, we will work with our Australian channel partners to reimagine how organisations manage and measure their cyber Exposure to accurately understand and reduce cyber risk. The aim is to deliver continuous visibility into where assets are secure versus exposed and prioritise remediation based on the asset’s business criticality and the severity of the exposure."

Australian distributor: Arrow ECS

Past employers: Samsung, SourceFire, Cisco

They said: "TPG's channel stretches from the small resellers up to the largest system integrators and managed service providers. There are multiple different channel models to fit every partner's needs."

What's new? "TPG has launched two new channel programs that are geared toward the smaller reseller. TPG, through it's acquisition of AAPT, has always been very strong with the largers partners but with these new programs partners can get commission on sales without the support, liability or risk. The partners are still able to get he sales support they have always been used to."

Past employer: Dell

Fast fact: Trend Micro hired Hewett, the former Kaspersky Labs Asia-Pacific managing director and country manager of Dark Trace, as its new channel director for Australia and New Zealand in January.

They said: Speaking about Hewett's appointment, Trend Micro APAC managing director Dhanya Thakkar said: "Expanding our focus while ensuring our existing channel is fully supported for success will help us accelerate growth in 2017. Our market-leading solutions are powered by the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network, which provides all customers — regardless of size or location — with comprehensive, proactive global threat intelligence and protection."

What's new? Trend Micro has launched a US$100 million venture fund to accelerate growth in emerging technology ecosystems, targeting startups in "hyper growth markets" like IoT.

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Tech Data, Ingram Micro, Rhipe

Past employers: Dark Trace, Kaspersky, Westcon, Sophos

Fast fact: Unisys merged its services and enterprise solutions teams to cut costs and quicken decision-making within the company's services business, president and chief executive Peter Altabef said in August.

They said: "I'm excited to join the Unisys Asia Pacific team and this is a great time to be with the company. Developing strategic, trusting and enduring relationships with our partners is a key platform for growth and for the success of our customers."

What's new? "Unisys has deep industry and business knowledge. This year you'll see us combining this IP with our partners' technology or specialised capabilities to deliver a compelling joint proposition into the market."

Past employers: VMware, CA, Suncorp

Fast fact: Jurisic Belinda took on the head of channel sales role at Veeam in April, a month after resigning from Citrix.

They said: "Veeam is known for strong vendor alliance relationships and I want to target partners that are working closely with our alliance partners and are yet to know why Veeam as a combined value proposition can not only make their business more profitable it can also open up more customer opportunities."

Past employers: Citrix, F5 Networks, HP

Fast fact: Globally Veritas has strategic cloud alliances with Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google and IBM. Docherty says: "We're seeing massive opportunities for partners with them using Veritas solutions to help customers migrate data and complex workloads to these multi-cloud environments."

They said: Docherty is looking for "highly technically capable partners with specialisation in the areas of information protection, information availability and information insight – especially with skills relating to cloud migration involving Azure and AWS".

What's new? "Holding our successful second Veritas partner awards night – and naming Intalock as the very well deserved overall Veritas Partner of the Year for 2017. Bringing on Tech Data as our second Australian distributor. It's great to see the skills and synergies that they're already bringing to the table."

Australian distributors: Dicker Data, Tech Data

Past employers: Symantec, Data#3, Tech Pacific

Fast fact: Verizon in June closed its US$4.48 billion acquisition of the Yahoo core business, with Yahoo's high-profile chief executive Marissa Mayer resigning.

They said: The Verizon partner program has three models, says Gosai. "The three channel partner engagement models include the first level, where the partner is an indirect sales channel for Verizon, selling solutions on behalf of Verizon. The second type of partnership is as a value-added reseller, which offers partners the flexibility to package and market and resell services. And the third partnership type is where Verizon and the partner work together to create an opportunity to jointly market and present unified and complementary solutions to prospective customers across vertical industries."

What's new? "My current focus is on building agent partners to offer solutions for the healthcare, financial services, hospitality, manufacturing and BPO industries within Australia. Verizon provides extensive training and certification for its products and solutions. Australian partners can tap into a wealth of marketing resources and support."

Past employers: Microsoft, IBM

Fast fact: Emerson Network Power rebranded as Vertiv at the end of 2016 after its parent company spun off the division to Platinum Equity and a group of co-investors for US$4 billion.

They said: "We’re looking for partners with an appetite for making critical infrastructure exciting and who can help us increase our footprint and deploy projects at the edge of the network in key verticals such as retail, healthcare, [banking, financial services and insurance] and government. Our partners aren’t only familiar with the latest technology trends, but are also efficient and effective in implementing IT projects using the best-of-breed technologies."

What's new? "This year has been huge for Vertiv and its channel partners. We’ve ramped up our channel team with increased headcount in both Australia and New Zealand, and its key task is to provide our partner community with more enablement tools and support to ensure joint success. Another key milestone this year was announcing our new national distributor, Synnex. Its extensive channel partner network is enabling us to expand our reach with new and existing partners."

Australian distributors: Synnex, Orion, Anixter, Arrow ECS, Comsol

Past employers: HPE, CSC

Fast fact: Software-defined networking is a huge focus for VMware, and earlier this year CEO Pat Gelsinger disclosed that NSX license bookings grew over 50 percent year-on-year and that nine out of every 10 top VMware deals included NSX.

They said: "A key area of growth for VMware is in its disruptive networking technology, NSX. We are continuing to look for opportunities to help drive sales of NSX through the channel, and help both partners and clients realise this emerging opportunity. VMware partners can take advantage of... increased margins of up to 30 percent for NSX solutions through our Advantage+ program."

What's new? "We’ve significantly enhanced partners’ selling abilities with services like Guided Selling, a tool for automating configuration, pricing, and quotes for partners – significantly speeding up and streamlining their sales processes. And the 'Always On' concierge program, providing 24/7 support for partners’ demand generation activities with technical support, marketing resources, and targeted funding."

Australian distributors: Ingram Micro, Tech Data

Past employers: StayinFront, MessageLabs, Symantec

Fast fact: Vocus is the subject of a bidding war between private equity firm Affinity Equity Partners and US private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), both of which have offered to acquire Vocus for $2.2 billion.

They said: Simmons took this permanent role in March and stepped down from the board. Vocus chairman David Spence said: "Mick’s extensive experience in the telecommunications industry makes him ideally suited to lead the enterprise and wholesale activities in Australia through this period of transition as we seek to leverage the significantly expanded business platform and opportunity set that Vocus has available to it following the Amcom and Nextgen acquisitions and the M2 merger."

Past employers: M2, Terria, TPG

They said: "Building an authentic channel means putting our partners – accountants and bookkeepers – first in terms of the experience we provide them, and hiring people who genuinely care about them. We know that through our people helping the trusted advisors in Australia we can drive the success in 2.1 million small businesses."

What's new? "Xero recently accelerated past half a million subscribers in Australia, doubling its local customer base the last two years. This has been a major achievement for me and my team in Australia, the partner channel consists of three quarters of our subscribers."

Past employers: Ord Minnett, BAC Airports, EY

They said: "We are looking for a variety of global and local partners who are in the print and document capture industry. We are looking to leverage the existing print channel and add value by extending their offering into 3D print solutions, particularly in the education sector."

What's new? "This year, Y Soft launched YSoft SafeQ 6, an integrated print management and advanced document capture solution that automates workflows. It now covers print management, document capture with automated workflows and 3D print management."

Past employers: Equitrac, Singtel Optus

They said: Sean Kopelke, ANZ country manager at Zscaler, said: "Dilshan brings the proven ability to build and lead a highly successful channel program and we look forward to the addition of his expertise. His proficiency in partner-led sales, coupled with driving successful go-to-market strategies within the channel community will be an invaluable asset to Zscaler as we continue to expand the role of our channel program in supporting our company's growth trajectory."

What's new? Zscaler now has offices in Sydney and Melbourne and supports more than 120 channel partners.

Past employers: Enghouse, ShoreTel, NEC Australia